Home Lab

Note: I have since sold the home lab equipment and am using other shared environments (work lab, cloud, etc.). This page is preserved here for those interested.

I realized early on that people like building home labs for various reasons – education, certifications, fun, testing, or some crazier stuff. As such, I offer a complete list of all hardware kept in the lab for your viewing pleasure. Most items will have links that will take you to the build list or related post.

If you have a question about the lab, feel free to leave a comment below. Keep in mind that hardware models continue to evolve and that some of the build information may be out of date – make sure to look for the post date before ponying up any of your hard earned cash on lab hardware. 🙂

Lab vSphere Hosts

These hosts are used for lab testing and validation. Based on my Sandy Bridge and Haswell builds.

Storage

All of my storage arrays in the lab are NFS attached Synology arrays over various 1 GbE links. Any array with 2 or more NICs are connected to the physical network via a dynamic link aggregation group (LAG) running LACP.

Licensing

I’ve written about various VMware licenses available for home labs in this blog post.

Miscellaneous Items

UPS: CyberPower CP1500AVRLCD UPS

Rack: Utility shelving, 36″ W x 14″ D x 60″ H

Monsters: Melvin the Monster VM

Bling: Color changing LED strips

Layout

I use a four tier approach for the lab. To start, here’s the entire thing:

The entire lab

The first tier is dedicated to lab hosts. I’ve stuck with Lian-Li cases of varying type.

The second tier houses networking and security devices.

The third tier is for smaller server devices and management storage.

The fourth and final tier holds the larger bulk items and lab storage.

Other Photos

Melvin protects my management arraysThe bottom shelfA monster sized all flash arrayZip tie more power stripsZip tie your power stripsInternal wireless for gadgets and suchCloud networking at its bestIt’s a bit like a runwayIt really ties the room togetherThe underside of my blingAverage draw from the ENTIRE home labA bunker filled with capacityAll flash in a small packageA big ol’ pile of capacityA stack of network goodiesThe internet!In case a non-vExpert breaks into my houseA management hostShow your passion through stickersThis server has a pulseOne of these things is not like the otherThe network stackMore switchportsThe flexboot cables are finger friendly